Parliamentary Assembly

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, first of all, I would like to say how pleased and honoured I am to have been invited to address this Assembly. My visit to Strasbourg today is evidence of the high esteem and respect that the Council of Europe enjoys in my country. Sweden has been a member of the Council since its creation in 1949. Our membership affirms our deep attachment to the ideals of Western democracy and our interest in the important work and activities of this organisation. It is the declared policy of my government to deepen relations with Europe. The Council plays a vital and indispensable part in our pursuit of that policy.

The Council of Europe is, indeed, an important forum for the discussion of co-operation in Europe at ministerial level as well as among parliamentarians. It is also doing essential work in the social, cultural and legal fields. The unique strength and moral authority of the Council, however, stem from the principles laid down in its statute, requiring the member states to safeguard the fundamental democratic values of individual freedom, political liberty and the rule of law.

Six years ago I had the opportunity of delivering a statement in this very hall at a symposium on the European Social Charter. At that juncture, the role of the Council as an institution for safeguarding democracy in Europe had been substantially strengthened. We had welcomed the re-entry of Greece into our organisation, as well as the new members, Portugal and Spain. Three European dictatorships had been toppled, and replaced by democracies. The development was an enormous source of comfort to us who firmly believe in the ideals of the Council of Europe. It demonstrated that the peoples’ yearning for freedom can never be crushed. It will always manifest itself again. It also demonstrates that democracy must always be defended, and that this defence must include persistent efforts to achieve the right to work and to social justice.

Our belief in the validity of these ideas, as well as solidarity with the persecuted and oppressed, should lead us to require all states to respect democratic rights and liberties. I am convinced that by shedding light on the consequences of oppression, public opinion in our countries plays a constructive role. In this connection the Assembly, with its large representation from member parliaments, has proved to be an important moral and spiritual force. I am also confident that the Assembly will continue to make an active and vital contribution in that regard.

This ambition of the Council of Europe presupposes, of course, a particular responsibility for upholding respect for human rights and democracy in its own region. Only if we are able to deal effectively and honestly with our own internal problems can we expect others to show respect for the positions taken by the Council.

One of our member states, Turkey, is at present not a democracy. Turkey undeniably lived through difficult and exceptional times before the military coup in September 1980. Sweden has taken the line that, being also a body for cooperation between its member countries, the Council of Europe could and should play a constructive role in furthering the restoration of full democracy in Turkey.

A year ago, however, our increasing concern about the deteriorating human rights situation in Turkey led us, together with four other countries, to refer the case of Turkey to the European Commission of Human Rights. Today, only six weeks before the promised parliamentary elections, Turkey is still a country where far-reaching restrictions on human rights are imposed.

The impression gained from the new constitution, the election law, the bans on former politicians and extensive interference in the election process gives us further grounds for questioning the kind of democracy the military regime has in mind.

After the elections we shall be in a better position to assess the course Turkey has embarked upon. It is my opinion that the Council cannot lower its democratic standards to accommodate individual member states. All must be measured by the same criteria.

As I have already mentioned, human rights transcend national boundaries. We must fight for them wherever they are in jeopardy, be it in Africa, Asia, Central America or Europe. It is quite clear that in the Eastern part of Europe, human rights are not respected. The regimes in that part of our continent are hard dictatorships, whose continued existence in many cases has had to be supported by foreign troops. This development towards dictatorship is especially tragic in countries like Czechoslovakia that have had a long democratic tradition.

In this connection I would like to draw attention to another country which is not European but which also has had a democratic tradition. I am thinking of Chile. With the coup in Santiago ten years ago, one of the few established democracies in the Third World was crushed by the military.

Since then the people of Chile have seen their material conditions drastically deteriorate, as well as their civil rights and liberties.

Today, however, the dictatorship is shaken. In this crucial phase it is vital that the representative democratic forces in Chile be given firm support in their efforts to restore democracy and human rights.

The Council of Europe has a unique moral authority in this field and in its Parliamentary Assembly gathers together political groupings which are in kinship with many of Chile’s political parties, those parties that now are working together to restore democracy in their home country – and they need and deserve our support.

If we could compare our societies here in Europe with how they looked say ten years ago, there is one drastic change that is of paramount importance to all of us. That is the steadily increasing number of people without a job.

In my opinion, unemployment is the most important single cause of social injustice and inequality in today’s welfare state. It has been said by many, in this hall and elsewhere, that unemployment is a social curse. Nevertheless, in the last few years unemployment has risen rapidly into numbers previously unheard of in the post-war period. In the West European countries, close to 10 million people were out of work five years ago. In 1980, that figure had risen to almost 12 million. Last year it reached 16 million, and next year almost 20 million people are expected to be unemployed. And the worst unemployment rates are found among our young generations.

The figures I have given you mean that next year unemployment will actually have doubled since 1978 – something that was almost unthinkable at that time. But even though the situation has deteriorated drastically, it does not seem to have caused the same public reaction. On the contrary, one sometimes gets the sad impression that the higher the unemployment figures get the less they seem to be talked about in some places.

Furthermore, it seems as if no change is in sight. Just a few days ago, OECD published an alarming report about the unemployment prospects for the rest of this decade. The report says that, even though the long-awaited economic recovery is under way, it does not seem likely to make inroads into unemployment for some time. To reduce OECD unemployment to the level of 1979 would require 20 000 new jobs to be created each day for the last five years of this decade. Only to keep unemployment from rising would require up to 20 million new jobs in the same period.

The problem of unemployment affects all countries – including those, like Sweden, where the rate of joblessness has been comparatively low through the years. We have now clear signs of an upturn in the Swedish economy, with a rather rapid growth in industrial production – but the level of unemployment is yet to be lowered.

The fight against unemployment is in my mind a principal task of all governments, matched in importance only by the struggle for peace and disarmament. There are many reasons for this.

First, unemployment is a terrible waste. At present, resources of production all over the world are grossly under-utilised. This is certainly not because all human needs are satisfied. As we all know, quite the contrary is true. In large parts of the world, not even the most basic needs of people can be met. In all societies there are vast unfulfilled needs, the fulfilment of which require human labour.

Still, a plenitude of production capacity is confined to idleness. People who want nothing better than a job are forced to spend their days also in idleness. This means less production – and hence less consumption – than would otherwise be possible. Therefore, unemployment is a waste.

Secondly, unemployment means human suffering.

Behind the hard facts of labour market statistics hide the misfortunes of innumerable individuals. It is only too easy to forget that each and every one of those millions of unemployed is a human being.

It could be the “guest worker” from southern Europe or North Africa who came to the industrial centres of Europe and for years took all the lowest-paid jobs but still found it possible to support himself and the family he left behind. Now he is told to return home.

Or it could be the girl I met about a year ago at a youth employment service in Sweden. She does not starve. Her parents and society provide for most of her basic needs – but not the need to be wanted, to be needed.

“I sleep late in the morning”, she said. “About lunchtime I may go down to the employment service. Sometimes they have something that might suit me. If so, I go and see the company in question. Usually there are lots of other applicants. Usually I have the wrong education. In any case, no one wants to employ a person without work experience. I have applied for jobs and been rejected fifty or sixty times. In the evening I stay home and watch TV or go down town to see my friends. I am OK so far, but I am quickly losing hope and confidence, and I grow worried when I see what is happening to some of my friends.”

What I think this girl’s story shows is that work is first and foremost a way to earn a living, but it is also much more than that.

In the 1950s, work was often described as a sort of “necessary evil”. We worked to earn leisure time. Our free time was the compensation for a tedious and monotonous job in an often unhealthy and unpleasant working environment. Books were written about a future civilisation based on leisure.

Work was then regarded by many as a matter isolated from living. With this attitude, it was not so important what working life was like, who decided on the working place and what this power was used for. Perhaps it was not important if some people did not have a job, as long as they had a decent economic situation.

They are maybe not only thoughts of the ’50s – one can certainly hear echoes of them now and then these days as well. But among many others, a new attitude to work has been taking form. Work is not only something you do eight hours a day, five days a week, for a certain compensation. Work also has a decisive influence on our family life, our relations with other people, and our general role in society.

Having a job is a major part of people’s social life. Work is an important part of a person’s identity. Work is intimately connected with values like self-confidence, human dignity, the purpose of life.

Thus, it is no surprise that increased unemployment coincides with increased mortality, a worsened state of health, more suicides, more shattered families, increased crime rates, increased use of drugs and more prostitution. The social consequences of mass unemployment are formidable.

The third reason for the need to fight unemployment has a direct relevance to the goals set up and the work done by the Council of Europe. I firmly believe that mass unemployment will ultimately constitute a threat to democracy. Or to put it in another way, democracy will in the long run not survive in countries with remaining high levels of unemployment. It undermines the fabric of society on which democracy has to be built. The open, tolerant, democratic societies cannot oppose that. Whether it will be autocratic societies of the Left or of the Right, I do not know, but open democracies it will not be.

What I think is particularly dangerous in this respect is the vast unemployment among our young people. We talk about the crisis of the economy. We say that everyone has to contribute to the solution of our economic problems. But when young people get out of school and want a job, when they want to take full part in the world of grown-ups, when they want to make their contribution, they are told that they are not wanted, not needed. Their contribution to the solution of the crisis is to be unemployed.

This causes young people to lose hope and confidence in themselves. It also creates bitterness and despair, loss of confidence in society, in our democratic institutions. If we deny young people the right to be full members of society, they may choose to place themselves outside society.

It is now argued that the experience of the last few years shows that maybe it is not so dangerous with unemployment after all. We have not had any violent reactions, in spite of new record high levels of the number of people out of work. Those who are jobless get some income anyway, and are not suffering too much. And some even say that maybe it is a good thing with a little more unemployment – it makes the unions more accommodating, and keeps inflation down.

These are in my mind very short-sighted arguments. The reactions against unemployment may not have been so violent – yet. But when generation after generation of young people find that there is no place for many of them on the labour market, the whole fabric of a democratic society may be undermined. And that is something that is not easily repaired, even if then the rate of joblessness were to go down again.

So, to sum up, I believe that the fight against unemployment is of paramount importance: in order to avoid waste in a pure economic sense; in order to alleviate the social consequences and the human suffering resulting from unemployment; and in order to restore faith in the democratic way of government, to strengthen democracy itself.

This is not the time or the place to go into a detailed analysis of what could be the best cure for our economies, how to best reverse the trends that lead to increased unemployment. I have simply wished to give an opinion on why this fight for more jobs is of such an extraordinary importance.

Sometimes the point is made that, if we want economic stability and low inflation, we must also accept some unemployment. It is true that the fight against inflation is of extreme importance. And it is true that traditional means of increasing demand by, for example, general tax cuts or a soft credit policy often has led to higher inflation. But there is no inexorable trade-off between full employment and inflation. There is no absolute need to pay for economic stability by taking jobs away from people. A more selective economic policy, with support for viable industries and an active regional policy, could increase employment without heavy inflationary pressures. It is a more difficult policy than the traditional Keynesian model, but it is also something that could give better results, if handled carefully and skilfully.

One thing must be emphasised. The fight against unemployment is a common fight, something that nations must do together. No country can pursue a policy of expansion on its own. Such policies inevitably lead to loss of competitive strength, and to large current account deficits. Soon enough, any attempt to expand on one’s own will have to be reversed. The solution to this is really very simple, and yet so difficult to implement. International economic interdependence means that the world economic crisis is not the separate crises of a large number of nations. It is a common crisis. Its solution is concerted action in order to step up growth and employment. As Helmut Schmidt put it in an article some time ago:

“We are still facing the question: Will countries try to solve their joint problems by co-operating – as it were, play a game in which everyone is the winner – or will they move into confrontation, a game in which everyone is the loser?”

There is still a long way to travel before we have reached a general understanding on the specific nature of a concerted action for growth. There is an on-going discussion, of course, on the best means of combating unemployment. Some argue that job-sharing is a good idea; that by decreasing the number of hours we have to work, we could create jobs for those who do not have any. Others propose an expanded public sector, which would give jobs in fields where many demands are still not met. But to a large extent we are still groping in the dark. It is, however, essential both for the future of Europe and for the future of democracy on this continent that we get together and find the right remedies against the plague of unemployment.

One thought only, put forward by the Swedish economist Rudolf Meidner in a speech the other day: Meidner compared the obvious difficulties we have in organising our economies in a way that gives people the opportunity to do all the jobs that are so badly needed, with the immense research apparatus and organisational efforts that are available to the military planners.

All over the world, there are “think-tanks” full of scientists working full-time on strategies for war. A major part of all technological research is devoted to military purposes. Innumerable billions of dollars and roubles and other kinds of money are used for the development of sophisticated new defence systems.

Why, one may ask, can we not use the same systematic approach in the fight against unemployment? Why could not there be a massive research programme with the object of organising jobs for people? Why cannot we have more “think-tanks” devoted to finding a strategy for employment and growth?

This spring I attended a conference in a Swedish city, about youth unemployment. There were many young people there, and during the discussion I invited fifteen of them to come back six months later, to the Swedish Prime Minister’s residence in the countryside, to discuss the situation for young people on the labour market.

This event took place the day before yesterday. The hours we had together – the unemployed youth, together with some representatives of the government and myself – taught me very much about the feeling of being unemployed. In preparation for this meeting, the young people who were there had worked hard on constructive proposals. These proposals were mostly based on their own activities, what they could do to organise themselves to start businesses and other activities of various kinds as they searched for employment. They were constructive and optimistic. It was a remarkable experience and it showed how important it is to have self-confidence, and how much that can do for young people. And we, in our turn, should have confidence in the young. We should never let them down. Because to have confidence in young people is to have confidence in the future of our society.

Finally, a few concluding words about that other issue which is of tremendous importance to all of us – the struggle for peace. We are living in a time of frightening insecurity. This autumn, the focus is again on Europe, on our own continent. We are faced with the prospect of another round of increase of that ultimate of weapons, nuclear arms, when the only reasonable way would be to reduce these arms.

Many have argued that peace in Europe is actually dependent upon the nuclear capabilities of the two military alliances. And it may be true that deterrence has prevented war in the past. But nuclear weapons are a special kind. Their existence has changed the very concept of war, because a nuclear war can never be won. These weapons do not offer any real protection. If they were to be used, the destruction would defy imagination. The so-called “victor” would be left in possession of a wasteland poisoned by radiation. Civilisation as we know it could be destroyed in a matter of hours. The facts about what nuclear destruction would mean are becoming well known to the public. But the consequences have not been drawn. States continue to prepare for nuclear war, and go on testing and producing nuclear weapons as ever before. This, of course, is terrifying people.

One person who probably more directly than almost anyone else has been involved in discussions about nuclear deterrence is Robert McNamara, who for seven years was Secretary of Defence in the United States and President of the World Bank for more than a decade.

Robert McNamara made the other day an extremely significant contribution to the discussion about the role of nuclear arms, in an article in Foreign Affairs. His conclusion is very straightforward:

“Nuclear weapons serve no military purpose whatsoever. They are totally useless – except only to deter one’s opponent from using them.”

And his analysis is clear: to launch a strategic nuclear attack against the Soviet Union would almost certainly lead to a response which would inflict unacceptable damage on the United States, and on Europe. The same goes, of course, for the result of a Soviet strategic attack on the United States. Unlike maybe a couple of decades ago, both sides now have huge strategic arsenals of which at least a considerable part would survive a first strike, and thus could be used to strike back with catastrophic results for both sides.

McNamara calls it an “act of suicide” to launch a strategic nuclear attack. And the threat of such an action as a deterrent to Soviet conventional aggression has lost all credibility, he says. One cannot build a credible deterrent on an incredible action.

The value of the tactical nuclear weapons is also doubtful, according to McNamara. The assumption is, of course, that NATO would use these weapons in responding to a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. But tactical nuclear weapons, especially artillery, have such a short range that nuclear explosions of NATO origin would occur on NATO’s own territory, with heavy casualties and massive destruction in its own countries. Also, it must be clear that the other side most probably would respond to a NATO attack with major nuclear attacks of its own.

These were also some of the reasons behind the proposal from the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues for a zone free of battlefield nuclear weapons in central Europe. We who worked in that commission wrote in our report that these battlefield nuclear weapons pose a special danger. These are grenades, mines and short-range rockets, of which there are thousands in Western and Eastern Europe. We proposed a scheme which involves the withdrawal of nuclear munitions from within 150 kilometres of the border areas between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, starting with central Europe and extending eventually to the northern and southern flanks as well. Our proposal was a codification of the principle that nuclear munitions should not be deployed to forward areas. The idea was to alleviate the pressures towards early use of nuclear weapons, to prevent decisions made and operations initiated from the principle of “Use them or lose them”. We suggested that one would start in central Europe because this is where the confrontation is starkest and the danger of explosive escalation highest. Of course, verification is an important element. Confidence in the mutual abstention from reintroducing nuclear munitions could be maintained by national technical means and by an agreement for inspection by challenge. The arrangement would be implemented in the context of an agreement on parity and mutual force reductions in Europe.

It is of course true that nuclear weapons may be reintroduced into this zone in wartime, and that nuclear weapons may be aimed at targets inside the zone from outside. But that does not weaken the idea of this zone as a confidence building measure, aimed at lowering pressures for large-scale use of nuclear weapons where both sides prefer to stay below the nuclear threshold but may fear pre-emption by the adversary. The purpose is to help avoid falling into a trap which neither party would want to, and where there is a common interest in finding ways of preventing this.

There is no doubt that these thoughts are attracting a renewed interest these days. I am firmly convinced that this proposal would lead to improved security for both sides if it were to be realised, and that the acceptance of the idea will grow, as witnessed by the on-going discussion within NATO.

To say that peace can be achieved only through deterrence is another way of saying that the search for security must be built on fear, on the threat of revenge. The object is to inspire as much fear as possible in your opponent. His object is to do the same to you. The result is that fear will continue to increase. And, with this, more and more weapons are developed and deployed in Europe and around the world. I do not think that this can provide a long-term basis for peace.

All peoples have a common interest in avoiding nuclear war. This is the one thing on which they could agree because it concerns their survival. On this, the alternative concept of common security is based. It is founded on the idea that opponents must act together to prevent war: by negotiating balanced reductions in existing arsenals, confidence-building measures and limitations on new weapons. A constructive dialogue between East and West is essential for this effort, and so is a dialogue between decision-makers, negotiators, scientists and the immense public concerned with peace and security in all countries.

This is also part of the background to why Sweden is so honoured to be the host country of the Conference on Confidence and Security building Measures and Disarmament in Europe, which is to start in Stockholm early next year. We sincerely hope that this conference, coming at such a decisive time for the future of our continent, will contribute to the effort to build security on a foundation more solid than suspicion and fear.

I have talked today about democracy, about employment and about peace. These are issues of human survival, of human dignity and of the right of every individual to live a free life where he can develop his own future.

These are all the concerns also of the Council of Europe. Therefore, the action that the Council is taking makes its work important and meaningful to the everyday life of every individual in our part of the world. (Applause)